I was on #ubuntu-motu today and a person asked if there was a policy for removing programs from the archive. They wanted to know if we could remove a program that hasnt had a release in years and the functionality is included in other programs so its completely superseded. This got me thinking maybe we should do some checking what programs are not being used or maintained that need to be scrubbed from the archive.
The main reason why this is a good thing is that if its in the software center and its a very bad program it reflects badly on the OS in general if new users install it. Just a thought 
Maybe its something MOTU can look into for lucid+1.
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A fair number of packages were requested to be removed (and were removed) from the archive in bug 495216. Another useful thing to do would be to look for nonfunctional software that is still in the archive.
that sounds reasonable.
Also, don’t forget the rating system. I really think that it will make a huge difference, helping differentiate modern/efficient/useful program from old/useless/unmaintained cruft.
yeah… kinda reminds me of the eclipse package (before the latest release for karmic): it was outdated by 3 years… totally useless and deceiving for all users who thought that for eclipse(as often is the case) installing from the repositores is the best way to do it
I am not 100% familiar with how Ubuntu handles this but…
about 2000 packages are part of the core and the rest are recompiled from Debian unstable (most of the time). So I would assume that the non-core ones are more likely to be less-used & poorer quality in Ubuntu. And the core programs are more likely to be higher-quality and more used. If you think the package is that bad, you might want to tell Debian about it , too.
i dont know how active they are, but there is https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-cruft-busters
Get it removed from Debian and the removal from Ubuntu happens automatically.